Non-alcoholic beer is beer that was brewed as beer and then had the alcohol dealt with, and the reason a good one tastes like a pint instead of flat bread is that everything that makes beer taste like beer, the malt, the hops, the yeast character and the carbonation, can survive having the ethanol taken out of it. The versions that disappoint usually lost their aroma somewhere in that process and never got it back, which is the first thing to look for when you are deciding what to buy. Below roughly half a percent alcohol you are drinking something that cannot intoxicate you, so the distance between a good non-alcoholic pale ale and a full-strength one is a brewing decision rather than a difference in kind.
What To Know Before You Buy A Can
- Notice that the alcohol is either never made or taken out afterwards, and that low-temperature and membrane methods keep far more aroma than open boiling does.
- Remember that ethanol carries aroma and mouthfeel at the same time, so brewers worth drinking add hops back afterwards and leave more unfermented extract to imitate the body.
- Read the alcohol figure on the can rather than the wording, because a beer labelled non-alcoholic usually sits between 0.4 and 0.5 per cent and the two labels are not separated by any rule you can rely on.
- Know that removing alcohol does not remove gluten, so a barley-based non-alcoholic beer still contains it and a label promising to have treated it is not a claim a celiac reader should trust.
How The Alcohol Gets Left Out Or Taken Out
The oldest approach is never to make much alcohol in the first place. A brewer can stop a fermentation early, while the yeast is still partway through its work, which leaves a thin, sweet, low-alcohol base, or can pitch a yeast that handles barley sugars poorly and so caps the alcohol on its own. A few makers skip fermentation altogether and build the drink by blending, acidifying and adding flavour, which is legal, cheap and usually tastes like hopped sugar water rather than beer.
The other route starts from a finished beer and takes the alcohol out afterwards. Gentle boiling drives ethanol off, since alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water, but open heat carries the hop and yeast aromas with it and cooks the malt a little, which is how the old dealcoholized lagers ended up flat and faintly stewed.
Vacuum chambers fix the temperature problem by dropping the boiling point, so the alcohol can be pulled off at something closer to cellar temperature and far less flavour goes with it. Membrane treatment, mostly reverse osmosis, pushes beer against a filter that lets water and alcohol through while holding back the larger molecules that carry taste and body, and then puts the water back. Both are honest improvements on open heat, and both cost money, which is most of what separates a good non-alcoholic beer from a supermarket one.
| Method | What it does | What it costs the beer |
|---|---|---|
| Stopped fermentation | Ends the ferment early so little alcohol forms | Dryness and length, plus leftover sweetness |
| Specialty yeast | Uses a strain that makes alcohol slowly or barely at all | A narrower flavour range than a normal ale ferment |
| Gentle boiling | Evaporates alcohol from finished beer | Top aroma and a faint cooked note |
| Vacuum distillation | Evaporates alcohol at a low temperature | Some volatile aroma, much less than open heat |
| Reverse osmosis | Filters alcohol out and puts the water back | Expensive equipment and a thinner mouthfeel if the water is not matched back |
Why The Flavour Keeps Going Missing
Removing alcohol takes more than the buzz. Ethanol carries aroma into the nose and thickens the feel of a beer in the mouth, so the process pulls out a flavour solvent and a body builder at the same time. The brewers whose non-alcoholic beers are worth drinking go looking for whatever was lost and put it back, by hopping after dealcoholization, by choosing a grain bill that leaves more unfermented extract behind to imitate the weight alcohol used to provide, or by selecting a yeast for the esters it leaves rather than for how much alcohol it makes. That is also why the best beers in the category are hoppy ones, since citrus and pine aromas from hops such as Citra, Mosaic and Cascade are intense enough to survive the process and easy enough to add again afterwards, while the delicate cracker-and-caramel character of a good lager has nowhere to hide once the alcohol is gone.
The other thing that goes wrong is age. Alcohol is a preservative, and without it a beer stales faster, so a non-alcoholic six-pack that has been sitting under shop lights since spring is a worse drink than the same beer a month ago. That single fact explains a large share of the bad first experiences people have with the category, and it is the reason freshness matters more in this corner of the fridge than anywhere else in it.
What Half A Percent Of Alcohol Means
The 0.5 per cent figure is the line most markets use for the category, and it is the same low-alcohol threshold European statistical agencies apply, so a beer at 0.4 per cent and one at 0.5 per cent belong to the same group however the label words it. Drinking to get a buzz off them does not work. A 355 mL can at 0.5 per cent holds about a gram and a half of ethanol against the roughly fourteen grams in a 5 per cent beer of the same size, so the alcohol arrives far too slowly to register, and the discomfort you would feel after six of them is the liquid, not the ethanol.
Fewer calories is usually true and never automatic. Alcohol carries about seven calories a gram, so removing it should cut the total, but a brewer who leaves sugar behind to replace the body the alcohol provided can land close to a light lager on the panel, and a flavoured non-alcoholic drink can carry more sugar than the beer it imitates. If the calorie count is the reason you are buying these, read the number rather than assuming it.
There are two situations where the trace alcohol stops being academic. Certain medications and the early months of recovery from alcohol dependence are cases where half a percent is worth raising with a doctor or a counsellor rather than shrugging off, and for some people in recovery the taste and the ritual of a cold beer are the problem regardless of what the number says. Gluten is a separate matter and a common misunderstanding: taking the alcohol out does not remove gluten, so a barley-based non-alcoholic beer still contains it, and a beer brewed from sorghum or rice, or one treated with enzymes and labelled gluten-reduced, is a different claim again, with gluten-reduced not being something a celiac reader should treat as safe. Vegan suitability depends on whether the brewer used an animal-derived fining agent such as isinglass, which has nothing to do with the style and everything to do with a line on the brewer's own spec sheet.
What Is On The Shelf In British Columbia
The category is no longer an American import sold here because nothing local existed. Strange Fellows Brewing on Clark Drive in Vancouver runs the Nevertheless line, a 0.5 per cent pale ale plus a hazy IPA and a pilsner, and its pale ale took third place in the Specialty Beer category at the 2023 BC Beer Awards, judged against beers with alcohol in them. Phillips Brewing in Victoria has sold the iOTA range since late 2021, under 0.5 per cent, in pilsner, pale ale, hazy IPA and cerveza form. Fernie Brewing launched LOGO, a pilsner and a hazy IPA at around 0.5 per cent, in June 2023, which puts a serious non-alcoholic beer into East Kootenay mountain towns rather than a city taproom. Several BC breweries also bottle hop water, carbonated water flavoured with the same hops and containing no alcohol at all, and it is worth trying once so you can tell the difference between a non-alcoholic beer and a hop soda.
The American names still fill a good part of the cold aisle, and two of them matter for what they demonstrate rather than for what they do here. Athletic Brewing, out of Milford, Connecticut, is the company that convinced a great many beer drinkers that the category could be good, and Bravus brews at its own plant in Anaheim, California, as a separate company rather than a label of Athletic. Neither tells you what a BC brewery can do, so the current provincial list is the one to work from when you are buying for a particular meal or a particular night, and BC Ale Trail keeps one.
How To Buy One That Tastes Good
- Buy the hoppiest thing on the shelf first, because aroma survives the process better than malt does, which makes a non-alcoholic IPA or pale ale a safer opening bet than a lager or a stout.
- Check the date before the price, since a beer without alcohol stales quickly and the oldest can in the case is the one that will confirm every prejudice you have about the category.
- Pour it into a glass and drink it cold but not frozen, because the aroma is most of what you are tasting and a can held against your lips takes that away.
- Look for a brewer who says how it was made, since vacuum or membrane treatment is an improvement worth mentioning and a label that says nothing is usually a beer that was boiled.
- Treat leftover sweetness as a style decision rather than a fault, because a beer whose ferment was stopped early keeps sugar, and some of them land closer to lemonade than to a pint.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is non-alcoholic beer actually alcohol free?
Most of them are not. A beer labelled non-alcoholic usually sits between 0.4 and 0.5 per cent, and the only way to know whether you are drinking traces or nothing is the figure printed on the can, because the words alcohol free and non-alcoholic are not separated by any labelling rule you can rely on in this market.
Can it make you test positive for alcohol?
Drinking it at a normal pace does not raise a blood alcohol reading to anything meaningful, since the total ethanol in a can is a tenth of what is in a regular beer. Alcohol held in the mouth is a different matter and can register briefly on a breath device, so if you are subject to a zero-alcohol condition, whether legal or medical, the sensible move is to skip the category rather than gamble on a rinse.
Is it good for rehydration after training?
It helps, and only because the alcohol is gone. A non-alcoholic beer is mostly water, and taking the ethanol out removes the diuretic effect that makes a full-strength beer a poor way to rehydrate, so it is a better choice after a run than a normal lager and a worse one than water with electrolytes in it. Nobody should treat a can of pale ale as a replacement for food and fluids after hard training.
Why does mine taste like bread?
Because the base is wort that never went very far, and unfermented barley sugar reads as cereal or dough. Some of that is the style rather than a mistake, but a lot of it is what the alcohol removal took away and nobody replaced. A hop-forward beer from a brewer who says how it was dealcoholized is the usual fix, and if the can you opened tastes like wet cardboard, the beer is old rather than the category being bad.
Pour Two Glasses Before You Judge The Category
Buy one fresh non-alcoholic pale ale from a BC brewery and one cheap imported non-alcoholic lager, chill both, and pour them side by side on the same evening. The difference between them is not the alcohol, since neither will give you any, and it is not the calories. It is aroma and freshness, and once you have smelled those two glasses next to each other the non-alcoholic section stops being a lottery, which is the same reason a brewer bothers with a vacuum chamber when a kettle would technically do the job.
